Jones, 2GB ordered to pay Trad $10k

The radio broadcaster Alan Jones and his employer 2GB have been ordered to pay $10,000 in damages and apologise to the Muslim leader Keysar Trad.

Mr Trad, who was born in Lebanon but now lives in Sydney, complained to the Administrative Decisions Tribunal in New South Wales over a series of radio broadcasts at the end of April 2005.

In the broadcasts Mr Jones described Lebanese males as "vermin" who "simply rape, pillage and plunder a nation that's taken them in."

The tribunal said the broadcasts included Mr Jones' view that Australia is not a multi-racial but a mono-cultural society, and that this mono-culture was under threat from the "enemies within."

Mr Jones spoke about "car hoons" - which he identified as "Lebanese Muslim youths" - and their disrespect for police.

The tribunal says Mr Jones also interpreted an allegedly inflammatory speech by a Lebanese-Australian cleric as an excuse for or incitement of sexual assaults by Muslim men upon non-Muslim women.

The tribunal says Mr Trad was invited on to the programme and, despite distancing himself from the comments of the cleric, was subjected to vigorous criticism by Mr Jones.

Mr Jones said Mr Trad was part of the "Muslim leadership" which had failed to do anything about the cleric or car hoons.

The tribunal found that Mr Jones' commentary, when taken as a whole, was unreasonable.

"Rather than dispassionately analysing the evidence and commenting on it, Mr Jones appears to have been induced or stimulated by his own preconceptions to place highly exaggerated and distorted interpretations on the few objective facts apparently known to him," the ruling said.

The tribunal ruled that Mr Jones' comments about vast numbers of Lebanese males raping, pillaging and plundering the country were "reckless hyperbole calculated to agitate and excite his audience."

Mr Jones has been ordered to make a public apology but the nature of it has not been decided.

Reacting to the ruling, Keysar Trad said radio announcers need to be more aware of their influence.

"Sometimes you get the impression they don't realise how much hurt and how much risk their comments create," he said.

"They create risk of harassment, risk of physical abuse and risk of intimidation, risk of loss of jobs."